A new study has been released that measures the homelessness problem in stark numbers.

That’s according to a recent study that took the first deep look into mortality rates in unhoused communities throughout the country. It found the death rate more than tripled between 2011 and 2020...The study’s co-author, Matthew Fowle of the University of Pennsylvania, said the 238% increase was “astonishing.”

“It’s unlike any other mortality trend that we really see in demography,” he said. “It’s comparable to something like a natural disaster or war.”

Fowle’s study looked at 22,143 deaths of unhoused residents in 22 localities across 10 states and Washington, D.C. — including eight California counties. The death rate among unhoused residents across all 22 localities increased from 814 per 100,000 in 2011 to 2,752 per 100,000 in 2020.

Among the general population, the nationwide mortality rate was much lower: 1,027 deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

All over the nation Republicans are saying that homelessness is because liberals are too tolerant. In fact, those so-called liberal cities are also at war on the homeless.

From New York City to Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., a growing list of major cities across the country are escalating a brutal war on their poorest denizens. No policy makes this clearer than the recent and aggressive sweeps of homeless encampments nationwide without any serious options for safe long-term shelter, let alone permanent housing.

In New York City alone, Mayor Eric Adams in March ordered the clearance of hundreds of homeless encampments; he recently announced that 239 of 244 sites had been removed, primarily in Manhattan. With hardly any notice, dozens and dozens of unhoused people saw their tents, mattresses, and makeshift shelters swept into garbage trucks...Given his already young record, Adams’s remarks about dignity are laughable. He cut $615 million from the city’s homeless services agency — a fifth of its operating budget — while dramatically increasing the policing of homelessness on the subways. He has referred to homelessness as a “cancerous sore.”

In Seattle, after a weekslong standoff between police and activists attempting to protect a homeless encampment, cops cleared the space on March 2. Los Angeles has seen multiple sites where unhoused people erected temporary shelters swept away this year in militarized raids. Dozens of encampments have been cleared in Portland. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, at least 65 U.S. cities are criminalizing or sweeping encampments.

The right-wing is winning on the homelessness issue. That much seems obvious. Murder of homeless people is on the rise everywhere in this country.

Examining mortality data for 17 US jurisdictions, Matt Fowle and Fredianne Gray of HomelessDeathsCount.org find 1,285 killings of homeless people since 2010. That’s both a fraction of the true national homeless homicide total, which is unknown, and the most violent and unlawful subset of 26,978 overall homeless deaths from all causes in those cities.
APD data shows that unhoused people are two or three times as likely to be victims as suspects—and if we remove homeless-on-homeless homicides to focus on “stranger danger” cases, the ratio is three to one.
“You have an epidemic of homelessness and living outside, and an epidemic of gun violence,” says Barbara DiPietro, senior policy director for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. “No one should be surprised to see that this is increasing. We throw vulnerable people to the wolves every day.”